PC World Data Recovery Know How Now Who?

We recently noticed our local PC World store has stopped advertising data recovery services. They used to offer a simple in-house recovery backed by a large international partnership to take care of the more difficult drives.

At some point, maybe around the time Know How replaced The Tech Guys for their support, things seem to have changed. Users are now left wondering where to go, and who to trust to recover their precious data.

This could be a blessing in disguise for users, as they can now choose any data recovery service, potentially saving some money.

Some tips for choosing a good data recovery lab:

Give them a call and ask some questions. If you don’t like the answers then go with your instinct and try somewhere else. Data recovery takes care and attention to be carried out successfully, but don’t let somebody baffle you with jargon.

Look out for additional costs. If you see adverts for £99 or less then be wary of costly hidden extras. Get all costs up-front. Note that you will probably need to add the cost of a new drive to the final bill, unless you supply one.

The most you should pay without getting any data back is a small diagnosis fee. Unless you need urgent out of hours work, you shouldn’t pay hundreds without first seeing a file list, or being talked through the data by phone.

Until the data has been recovered, then it is impossible to say that it can or can’t be done. Don’t rely on promises or estimates.

If you need data recovery then give us a call. We have services to suit home users and businesses, and have been in the industry for over ten years.

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Advice

Stop using the hard drive as soon as possible. If the problem is getting worse then you may eventually lose access completely.

Don't download ANYTHING to the disk. It could write over the files you're trying to recover.

Don't try to scan, repair or fix any errors unless you have backups of the data. A failed repair process can damage the files beyond recovery.

Don't re-install or restore the computer unless you have backups of the data already. It may get the machine running again, but only in a factory-fresh way. Your data will be lost.

If you manage to access your files at any point, make a copy to another drive as soon as you can. It may be a fluke, and could be the last time you see the files. Don't reboot expecting to see them again.

If the files you need are really important then you should consider getting the disk professionally recovered. We've spent years making our process as safe as possible to maximise our chances of success.

If you decide to try your own recovery, keep a close watch on the time estimates. If the time keeps incrementing up it could be a sign of disk trouble. Failure to deal with that could cause the drive to fail completely, and beyond repair. A hard drive shouldn't take longer than a few hours to extract.